Joe M. O'Connell

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Writers Guild nominates 'Friday Night Lights' for best drama

Austin-shot Friday Night Lights is finally getting the love as the lights begin to dim on the series. The Writers Guild of America has nominated the show for best written drama. Listen to the list of other nominees and you'll see it's no faint praise: Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

Friday Night Light's fifth--and almost certainly last--season is airing currently on DirecTV and will show on NBC in the spring. Stars Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler both were nominated for Emmy Awards this year.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

'Chaos' TV series sneaks across border to Canada

Remember when Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert showed up at Dallas City Hall to announce the CBS mid-season replacement series Chaos would shoot in Dallas? Not going to happen. Instead it's about to begin production in Canada with Kurtwood Smith (That '70s Show) replacing Stephen Rea in the cast.

As I told you here, Dallas' loss of the series was completely out of the city's hands. Instead the change came about during the Chaos chaos between Twentieth Century Fox Television (the maker of the show) and CBS.

Friday, December 3, 2010

NBC cuts 'Chase' by four episodes

This just in from The Hollywood Reporter: NBC has opted to reduce the order of Dallas-shot Chase episodes from 22 to 18. It's a dismal sign for a Warner Bros. show that has had some trouble getting viewers.

'Meet Jane' says howdy to Austin shoot

The good news to come out of the quick cancellation of Austin-shot My Generation? One of the producers took notice of the Capital City--and specifically the Capitol--as a great location. The result is the Lifetime series pilot for Meet Jane, a Washington D.C. set story (thus the allure of the Capitol) starring Molly Parker of Deadwood.

Here's the description of the show via Deadline.com: "centers on Jane Bilinski (Parker) whose stale life as an unhappily married mother of two daughters in the Washington, DC area is suddenly re-energized and empowered when the FBI enlists her to spy on her husband, a computer technician the government suspects is selling top-secret information to Russia."

The show is from Andi Bushell who was a co-executive producer on My Generation. Bushell wrote the Jane script and will executive produce the pilot.

The series looks to have some clout behind it. The other executive producer is Mark Pedowitz, former prez of ABC Studios.

For my potential extras out there, On Location Casting is handling those chores and is sending you to their Facebook page.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Sundance says you better 'Take Shelter'

The Sundance Film Festival's Austin pick of the year is Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter. You remember Nichols from his 2008 Southern gothic debut film Shotgun Stories.

Here's Take Shelter as described by Sundance: “A working-class husband and father questions whether his terrifying dreams of an apocalyptic storm signal something real to come or the onset of an inherited mental illness he’s feared his whole life."

It was filmed in small town Ohio, and saw the filmmaker reunite with Michael Shannon. It also features Katy Mixon, Shea Whigham, Kathy Baker, Ray McKinnon and Jessica Chastain (who also stars in The Tree of Life).

Also, expect a 20th anniversary screening of Richard Linklater's Slacker this year at Sundance.

'Tree of Life' Trailer to hit theaters this weekend!

The Playlist is reporting that the first trailer for Terrence Malick's Smithville, Texas-shot The Tree of Life is set to hit theaters this weekend before showing of the film Black Swan. It's a safe bet the trailer will soon after appear online.

'Benavides Born' brings South Texas to Sundance

I have to admit I'd never heard of Benavides Born before it was announced today as a competition film in the upcoming Sundance Film Festival. Why? Because it was shot primarily in South Texas in small towns (Benavides, San Diego, Alice, Carrizo Springs) near Corpus Christi earlier this year, and I frankly don't expect a lot of films to be shot there. Thus it's a nice surprise.

Here's the story: “Benavides Born is a drama about Luz Garcia, a fictional high school senior who desperately wants to go to UT Austin and has earned admission by being among the top in her class. The problem is her family cannot afford it. She therefore pins her hopes on a scholarship awarded to the winners of the State High School Powerlifting Meet. When her powerlifting plans don’t work out as she hoped, she has to find a different kind of strength to keep her dream alive. “

We'll be hearing a lot more about the film and it's director Amy Wendel in coming months.

What they're saying about EVACUATION PLAN

"Tales alternately gentle, dramatic, surrealistic, that collectively affirm the beauty of being alive, even as they acknowledge that all of us face the necessity of making our own 'evacuation plan.' "
-- Brad Buchholz, Austin American-Statesman

" The chapters about Matt and the short stories demonstrate O’Connell’s ability to develop sympathetic, true-to-life characters using intriguing details and compelling dialogue. The stories remind us of those times when a brief encounter with a stranger left us wondering about that person’s past. In Evacuation Plan, O’Connell satisfies that curiosity. "
-- The Texas Observer

"It was very hard for me to put this book down. It carries us through the deepest meaning in life and most painful, most hopeful memories for a wide range of fascinating characters. Based in a hospice, this book could have easily resorted to cheap sensationalism, or whacked us upside the head with stereotypic melodrama, but instead it was respectful, honest, and tender. The characters will stay with you - you may even recognize some of them within your own life. "
-- Award-winning author Carmen Tafolla

"An excellent, thought-provoking diversion from our own inevitable plummet toward the grave, and we highly recommend it to you, the living."
-- Wayne Alan Brenner, The Austin Chronicle

"O’Connell has drawn some colourful and believable characters. The material relating to the hospice and terminal care rings true, all the way to reconciliation and forgiving."
-- Dr. Roger Woodruff, International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care

"The tales are nicely written, and some are quite compelling; “The Male Nurse,” for one, is a dreamlike reverie."
-- Texas Monthly

“Evacuation Plan: A Novel From The Hospice by Joe M. O'Connell is nothing short of remarkable … a novel that walks hand-in-hand with death and yet, somehow, the reader finishes the book feeling inspired to live.”
– The Paisano

"A wonderful blend of lives ordinary but with sometimes extraordinary elements. We all share these stories of life in some way, despite moments of harshness or unforgiving pain. There is always a common thread of humanity and ultimately forgiveness to be found, even if it's in the last moment of life."
-- Elaine Williams, author of A Journey Well Taken

"Reading Evacuation Plan is akin to unwrapping a series of small perfectly-chosen presents. Both human and humane, The book resembles a modern Spoon River Anthology with its vivid, touching glimpses into the lives of those in and around a hospice."
-- Tim McCanlies, screenwriter The Iron Giant, writer/director Secondhand Lions

"In Evacuation Plan Joe O'Connell does for the process of dying what Sherwood Anderson did for middle America in Winesburg, Ohio--he shows us in brief flashes the aching beauty of the grotesque, and shows us how extraordinary small lives and quiet deaths can be."
--John Blair, Drue Heinz Literature Prize winning author of American Standard

"Here's a book so rich with stories of the living, so filled with people's bountiful problems, as well as incidents of wry forgiveness, one realizes over and over the circling forces of life's completeness. It's not a sad tale nor a needless feel-good account but a balanced, sometimes comic, affirmation of what is here and what we all know is waiting."
-- Carolyn Osborn, award-winning short story writer

"The broken, the hopeful, the frustrated, the clueless, and the forgiving touch one another with words, remembrances, and hands. Inevitably, readers will quietly wonder about their own evacuation plan."
-- Will's Texana Monthly

O'Connell's protagonist skillfully navigates under the guise of a writer seeking raw materials for his craft in the stories of the dying, but mines and refines instead the stuff we're all made of. In this finely crafted novel, we come away with much more than the astute observation that many of the best stories begin at the end. But, then again, that notion is also worth a lot.
--Jesse Sublett, cancer survivor, rocker and author of Never the Same Again

"Joe O'Connell's Evacuation Plan--this Decameron of the hospice--encompasses a paradox. Death comes for everyone, but death is the only human universal because everyone dies, and witnesses dying, with private, unspeakable shame. Yet there are a few minutes left to speak. As people die, they tell stories which spawn new stories, which remind us that death is agony, a violent struggle, but so is living."
-- Debra Monroe, Flannery O'Connor Award winning author of Newfangled and Shambles